It’s … The Encyclopedia of American loons! Our new and exciting series presenting a representative sample of American loons from A-Z.

Saturday, August 5, 2017

#1880: Bill Ledbetter

Bill Ledbetter is the pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in
Oklahoma, wingnut, creationist and proponent of David Barton-style pseudohistory and Christian Nation nonsense. As such, he has for instance been invited to serve as the weekly chaplain
for the Oklahoma legislature, and his 15-minute sermon there sums up his lunacy
pretty well (discussion here and here and here;
follow the links if you for some reason want to hear the original – it is gloriously insane): Ledbetter started
off by claiming that “America is the only
nation in history that’s been under one governing document her whole history,”
which is false (the Articles of Confederation, anyone? Not that Ledbetter cares
overly for accuracy or fact). Then he distorted the infamous Lutz study of references made by the Founding Fathers and passed on a fake Patrick Henry quote about the nation being founded on
Christianity as evidence that the Constitution is based on the Bible (Henry, of
course, was firmly opposed to the Constitution) and to argue against the
separation of church and state (and in favor of mandatory prayers in public
schools, which Ledbetter apparently believes is mandated by the Constitution),
before rounding it all off with some creationist talking points and claiming
that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on New Orleans for sin; also, 9/11
was God’s punishment for not instituting a theocracy: “We must have people in office or put people in office that will make
law that corresponds with the word of god and the will of god. not political
correctness. Not tolerance – it always brews intolerance.”

Here is his take on evolution: “If you throw God out, then you have to come up with some idea that
you’re going to teach your kids about where they came from. And you have to teach
that in school. And now all across our nations, kids are taught that they are
advanced mutations of a baboon. They are taught that they came from a monkey. Let me tell you something. Evolution is
not science – and I know that’s not politically correct … But what it is is an
indoctrination to teach a godless worldview.” The problem with his opinion
isn’t that it is politically incorrect.
And apparently teaching evolution is also unconstitutional, since the
Constitution tells us that the Bible should be the guideline for public school
curricula: “It [evolution] defies our
founding documents – our forefathers talked about the creator in the
Declaration of Independence – read it!” Uh-huh. That the Origin of Species
was published in 1856 is a problem but far from the main problem with that
assertion.